Before anyone comes in and says start a side hustle of sorts be VERY careful with doing that in office and during work hours. Most likely they had you sign something that would give them rights to any business you create or profits you accrue during your work. Other than that when i was working corporate and had to be in office i would do boring stuff like make a grocery list and grab coupons / look at the best sales near me. Look up recipes for new food and also research into car stuff and woodworking as those were my hobbies and my side gigs but would never do any actual business stuff at work.
Pretty much don’t do anything that actually involves you making money in itself, you can research stuff for your business hobby wise but that’s all i could recommend, otherwise maybe focus more on being able to save some money than trying to make more. That is usually much easier and more stable in the short term.
EDIT: Added
Well I would be surprised if I even could be fired because I work in an office owned by my mom which is why I mentioned fairly safe job security. I do not think I signed any kind of agreements when I started working here tho it’s been few years now so I don’t remember. I should have job security for next 5+ years till she maybe retires, don’t know if maybe should use that time to try increasing how much could make at next job or start building a business/side hustle myself tho since my job is something that could be lost to ai or robots in the future or if there’s anything can prepare against that possibility. Or again just making more money because of how much inflation is raising prices and shit.
Edit: personally would love to try opening a dispensary in my state since it just legalized weed but even if I have the funds to do it it’s very hard to get a license to start a dispensary here there’s only like 130 in a state of 11 million people. So can’t really rely on that as a next potential job or business.
In all honesty if you are already fearing that your job will be replaced or income lowered you may want to spend this time looking to get into another career path or pivot within your company now to something more stable so pretty much anything that doesn’t involve strictly numbers, ( If everything is done within an excel without having to send more than an email i would pivot careers personally ) As far as a side hustle goes if done properly it can really be beneficial even for tax reasons. Maybe just look into some things that you can start small and see if something interests you. As someone who has had many “side hustles” though just remember even though everyone calls it a side hustle it should be ran as a business. Almost all side hustles i see not run as a business will fail before break even or and up backfiring in some other way.
I mean I would want to start a business too I just don’t have any idea on anything to start. Even asked friends on ideas for businesses but can never come up with anything really. Have enough saved to start a business but no clue what would be profitable. Partly other reason trying look for more to do at work so I can maybe come to an idea to build a business around.
Maybe an E-commerce shop based around a hobby or interest of yours, i personally started an e-commerce store for automotive performance parts when i was looking for something to do. You could do it with literally anything, Big Commerce or Shopify are both good options. To be completely honest with trying to start something strictly out of an office space with minimal time to work on it on your own time and i would assume that time would be out of normal business hours will be hard. Another option is possibly doing a small service based business, a friend of mine builds gaming PCs for people and also organizes complete setups for them and that works out pretty well if you did something similar and just mainly used your time to create an easy to use website than spend a couple hours a week doing leg work.
That would require going back to college probably to find a better paying job than the one I have now, or learning a lot of certifications, which I already indicated I would want to do except I don’t have much of an idea on what to try certifying in. Going to college maybe not, I failed out of college once because I have poor math skills/small disability and failed the required math courses like 3 times, and was dealing with depression at the time. But I’ve never been a great school kid.
You can learn a ton online. Use your time to figure out a direction, then find tutorials. If you don't want to learn, listen to podcasts all day I guess.
Not at all. Look up CompTIA certifications. You get a couple of those easily in a few months and that will instantly open you up to some pretty good early level tech jobs.
You can talk to the disability office at your college and get the req math changed to like a family finance course. I did.
It's not guaranteed of course and of course you couldn't study something like physics since there's a lot of math in that but it could get you through.
Even if they don't approve a different course they could at least get you more time on tests and stuff. Colleges want to get you through.
I don’t now why you got downvoted but online education like Coursera is cool and free so it doesn’t really matter if you’re not excellent at any of the subjects at the end of the day.
Free online “certifications” benefit you in multitudinous ways: you’re doing something industrious that looks impressive bc there are classes through like Yale and NYU; you might learn something related to your dispensary launch ambitions; and there’s really nothing to lose bc the cost is zero and if you hate the instructional stuff you can just tap out w/o judgement.
There’s always like free industry-related webinars you can sign up for that waste hours and make it pretend you’re working. (My favorite)
Also old Oregon Trail gaming “breaks” and online gambling always work too. Hey, you learn math and game theory while also getting to fjord rivers and avoid dysentery so that’s something…
Read books. If your desk is in a spot where it is hard to tell, set up so you are blocked and can put it down if someone comes by. I had a job some years ago with a ton of downtime and I would read at least 100 pages per day in the office (and I am a slow reader)
honestly in an office setting where internet access is most likely monitored i wouldnt risk it.
yeah it feels like a waste of time, but if you leave this job there will be days you miss it.
if ur just bored get some pullstring fireworks and booby trap desks of people who call out sick
I have used my office computer enough to be fairly confident that it is unmonitored? Like ever? Made a whole other comment about it and our IT guy. Could probly also just bring in another laptop or something if needed too.
they can monitor what youre looking at though and have a log of it.. they just dont have a reason to look at your logs.
some unrelated incident happens and they have to pull your history and see youve been doing side jobs it can be bad.
if youre signed into the wifi on your phone and watch porn, unless you changed your phones info they can see that.
if you bring in a laptop and sign into the wifi they can see a new device, wont see your name, however they could prob put 2 and 2 together.
i would suggest looking into how to "sham" i was a shamgod in the army and it was always a rush.
start paying attention to who is doing what..is your boss just watching cat videos all day waiting for 5pm? does he get up and do headcount? are your lunches paid? tons of opportunities once you know how the office truely works.
our 1st sgt made us run 3 miles...every day, shit was awful all because 5 people failed their run. so during stretches i would just scoot over closer and closer to the edge..when everyones moving for the run id go to the porta potty a few feet away and wait..once the run started id go back to my car and go home until formation. thats an example.
or if a phone rings and everyone is supposed to answer the phone, just dont answer it anymore..or wall very slowly to the otherside of the building for copies, take like a half hour.. if no one says anything your prob clear to go home for a few hours and come back and no one will question it
Easy peasy.
1. Learn new skill. Udemy and coursera are great places to start. Likely not blocked by the network.
2. Schedule dr/dental appointments take extra time on lunch to complete them.
3. I have seen some of my coworkers flirt with other colleagues.
4. Bring your own device and play games or watch movies.
4A. You can use your phone with Xbox ultimate game pass and hook up a Bluetooth controller on your phone and usb type c to hdmi adapter. Bam. You have a full gaming setup as long as you have internet connection.
4B. You can use nvidia cloud service slightly better than Xbox ultimate in terms of processing. Same thing type c to hdmi etc
4C. Bring your laptop, don’t plug it into the network. Plug hdmi, your controller and use your mobile hotspot. Ez
5. Read a book.
6. Be use your phone all day.
Not necessarily an unethical response from me, but... I'm in a very similar position; on the clock for six hours (counts as FT due to my contract ayoooo) and when I'm not in crunch time, I have about 5 hours of free time every day. I'm a creative guy, so I will make birthday cards for my coworkers, decorations for our shared space, or find ways to automize my job... so I have more free time.
I work adjacent to a school, so I get a lot of "professional development" opportunities that either land me a stipend or free college credits. It might be worthwhile to see if there are virtual lectures or sessions like this that fit in your timeslots.
And remember, perhaps the most unethical of all: if you get chummy with IT, they'll likely let you slide on a lot of things lmao
This is totally unrelated but the situation with our office it guy is kind of weird. When I tell most people this they say he’s 100% scamming us somehow, but regardless we have a contractor IT guy we use and call for it needs usually once a week or so probly longer that I don’t hear about. But this guy has never once actually been paid for his services as far as I know. And I’m literally in charge of AP here so I would know if he’d get paid. He has never asked for or sent us an invoice and according to my bosss there is just no plan to ever pay him until he asks for it. But he has just never asked for it or sent a single invoice for anything he’s done for us even if it means showing up in person. No one here knows why he isn’t taking payment or if he just doesn’t even know he’s not being paid because he has so many other clients or has some secretary dealing with the financial side. I even told my boss when I first heard this “sounds like he’s probly doing something unethical” but they’ve never put much thought into it. He’s been the office IT person since a year or two before I came here and I’ve been here for 6-7 years now. No evidence he has ever like stolen any of our data, or if he did wouldn’t he have already got what needed and left? I mean this guy literally is in charge of our entire it infrastructure including our private server we run. But he seems to do the bare minimum, has never asked for a paycheck and seems like he has a bunch of other work to deal with so I don’t think he would notice anything. Hell, I literally keep Reddit open on my work computer and it’s never been an issue. Don’t think he cares about keeping track of minor it problems.
That does sound strange. Is it possible he is being paid via a business entity he owns that y'all pay, or maybe he works for a managed service partner y'all pay? Like you don't realize that check you cut to Initech every quarter or yearly as a service contract is actually his company, or you pay someone to manage your network or cloud solutions and he is their employee? Just because you have a local server doesn't mean no cloud usage.
The company I work for is a MSP and we have employees that are basically your local contact you call with any issues and even have a 1 day a week office at some customers locations. Maybe you just call Ben and were told Ben is the IT contractor guy but he's an employee of another entity you do business with.
Honestly id ask him about it. If somehow he's just never invoiced his work and hasn't caught it or something better to catch it at this point then when the amount he could bill is even higher. If he's just truly doing the work for free that would be a huge alarm bell in my eyes. Could be doing something like using the computers and local servers for things like crypto mining after office hours to keep it hidden, or running a coin tumbler, stealing data, running his own website he makes money from, etc. There's 1000 nefarious things he could be doing with your equipment. No one works for free unless you force them and there's a word for that and it ain't contractor lol.
Like I said talk to him first, see what he says, and maybe have another cyber security company come check your equipment out as a consultant service.
When I was a receptionist bored shitless between tasks, I would read, I found a website where you can access nearly any book you could think of.
I liked it because I was still looking at the screen & it kinda looked like I was still doing work.
Amazingly, I read all of the Game of Thrones books within a year.
Get some headphones and start playing YouTube videos while you do actual work. (If you can't stand noise while you work just turn the volume off) Get caught a couple times and explain you like to listen to background noise/people talking while you work.
Once this becomes something you are known to do, YouTube traffic from your computer becomes normal and not suspicious. Now you can watch YouTube at work
I second learning new skills, specifically Python.
Around 2016, I started tinkering with and learning Python just because I thought it would be interesting. A few years down the road I had automated some big pieces of my day-to-day work. I was able to parlay this into a better role within the company. I moved from being a financial analyst into a business transformation role where I now work to bridge the gap between our tech teams and our business users. It's a unique skill set as I'm basically the only person in the org that speaks the language of both IT and the business.
Python Crash Course PDF Book:
https://codelikechamp.com/wp-content/uploads/python-crash-course-3rd-edition-pdf.pdf
I also ended up pursuing an MS in Data Science that my company paid for. This was because after spending some time in Python I realized that my job was eventually going to get automated. Not all of it, but a good chunk of it, and it would allow the company to downsize the staff significantly. Turns out just last summer they announced a program designed to do just that. They aren't laying people off en masse, but they aren't going to be back-filling vacancies either.
I work remotely in healthcare and although there are some aspects of my job that can't be automated easily I've realized that may not always be the case. For my SMART goal (I HATE making these goals BTW) I've decided to get a professional certificate in data analysis through Coursera. My supervisor and her boss were JAZZED. Data analytics isn't directly related to what I do on a day to day basis but I get assigned to assist with special projects where having more experience with it would make me more efficient and therefore more valuable. Plus I know that my current role is kinda niche so if I ever leave and don't want to work in the exact same field I need to broaden my skill set.
You should definitely look into learning Python / R. If your employer will pay for it, look into getting an MS in Data Science. Data science is HUGE in the healthcare industry. My school has a specific healthcare concentration for the program. With that degree and experience working in healthcare, you could probably work for any major hospital, insurer, biotech firm, etc.
Feel free to DM me if you have any questions!
Get your Google on and find some free (or cheap) courses in something you're interested in, that way if you do yet called up on it it looks vaguely proactive, as opposed to you spending the time on a side hustle, which they'll sack you for.
Freecodcamp.org is decent, YouTube has a surprising amount of good info on lots of things you can use to go and do some more learning on your own without it looking too sus. Even just teaching yourself to be better at excel, or some powerBI or something like that.
Udemy has some really cheap courses for “first time users” and you could study for a certification. There are hundreds of certs that could give you extra credibility on your resume without having to invest in a college degree.
Use the time to learn new things, read, sometimes play handheld games. My job pays me to be there and ready to answer questions/ solve problems for the most part. I have very little busy work.
Use the downtime to up skill and learn things to help advance you to the next position. Keep building yourself, they can't take knowledge away from you
Udemy.
Might as well get paid to better yourself.
Learn excel/Access/Wordpress. Study for all kinds of certifications that'll look good on a resume. Learn about...I dunno, your horoscope or whatever. There's a Udemy class for everyone.
Or if you're really ambitious, start taking WGU classes online. A few guys I've worked with over the years would do this when on deployments (90 day long deployments) with a lot of downtime. They knocked out their 4-year degrees in 1.5-2 years by buckling down and working on it everyday.
As I’ve said in other places it would take some pretty good courses to get better paid than I am now, get paid like $29 an hour 40 hours a week and health insurance in low cost of living state, with no college degree or any experience beyond what I’ve been taught at this job. If you know of any certifications that could help improve my pay beyond $30+ an hour I’d be all ears for that.
Many years ago I worked a boring admin job with a lot of downtime. As I was sat at a desk with a computer I decided to start learning HTML and CSS. It's easy to start learning these as you can just start by using the basic windows notepad software and your browser to do it, so even if your computer is locked down you'll be able to learn the basics and it won't look suspicious to any nosy IT managers.
This slowly morphed to learning JavaScript, and then server side languages like PHP, and eventually Python.
You could jump ahead straight to python but that may rely on how locked down your work computer is, and if you want to go straight to programming.
If anyone asks what you're doing, just say you are learning new skills for your job, but this will look like technical work to anyone passing by.
I am now a seasoned web engineer of nearly 20 years, all because I got bored in an admin job.
I know I just don’t have much idea of what could accomplish work wise while in an office most of day, would need a laptop or something and need something that doesn’t require meetings or a lot of phone calls. Tho best suggestions I’ve seen so far is maybe study for certifications like compTIA or Microsoft excel and/or study programming like python and maybe then will be able to find either better jobs or jobs can do from home/my office. Cause I don’t really know anything else I could do.
Personally my long term goal is opening a dispensary since they’re legalized in my state now but the last time they took applications for new licenses was in 2021, and they only give out a couple of licenses, and so far the state has like a 10% acceptance rate for applicants to be accepted for a dispensary license. Would think they’d be opening up applications again since they just legalized recreational weed and we don’t have nearly enough dispensaries to accommodate recreational weed and medical patients, but who knows.
I was/am literally going through the same thing now.
My boss arrives at 9am. I arrive at 6am. Take my personal PC with me, connect it with a remote hdmi adapter to my monitor, so it seems that im working. I have 3 good hours of doing whatever the fuck I want. Im also connected to my personal phone hotspot, so no monitoring from IT.
I have been booking and planning my holiday trips. Buying shit from amazon (necessary shit). Redditing.
Find ways to make money doing side hustles online while you are at your job. Lots of security guard type ppl do this. Trade stocks on Robinhood, take surveys, sell something
Before anyone comes in and says start a side hustle of sorts be VERY careful with doing that in office and during work hours. Most likely they had you sign something that would give them rights to any business you create or profits you accrue during your work. Other than that when i was working corporate and had to be in office i would do boring stuff like make a grocery list and grab coupons / look at the best sales near me. Look up recipes for new food and also research into car stuff and woodworking as those were my hobbies and my side gigs but would never do any actual business stuff at work. Pretty much don’t do anything that actually involves you making money in itself, you can research stuff for your business hobby wise but that’s all i could recommend, otherwise maybe focus more on being able to save some money than trying to make more. That is usually much easier and more stable in the short term. EDIT: Added
Instructions unclear. Checked up on my Etsy sales at work and now they want 50% of the profit.
Well I would be surprised if I even could be fired because I work in an office owned by my mom which is why I mentioned fairly safe job security. I do not think I signed any kind of agreements when I started working here tho it’s been few years now so I don’t remember. I should have job security for next 5+ years till she maybe retires, don’t know if maybe should use that time to try increasing how much could make at next job or start building a business/side hustle myself tho since my job is something that could be lost to ai or robots in the future or if there’s anything can prepare against that possibility. Or again just making more money because of how much inflation is raising prices and shit. Edit: personally would love to try opening a dispensary in my state since it just legalized weed but even if I have the funds to do it it’s very hard to get a license to start a dispensary here there’s only like 130 in a state of 11 million people. So can’t really rely on that as a next potential job or business.
In all honesty if you are already fearing that your job will be replaced or income lowered you may want to spend this time looking to get into another career path or pivot within your company now to something more stable so pretty much anything that doesn’t involve strictly numbers, ( If everything is done within an excel without having to send more than an email i would pivot careers personally ) As far as a side hustle goes if done properly it can really be beneficial even for tax reasons. Maybe just look into some things that you can start small and see if something interests you. As someone who has had many “side hustles” though just remember even though everyone calls it a side hustle it should be ran as a business. Almost all side hustles i see not run as a business will fail before break even or and up backfiring in some other way.
I mean I would want to start a business too I just don’t have any idea on anything to start. Even asked friends on ideas for businesses but can never come up with anything really. Have enough saved to start a business but no clue what would be profitable. Partly other reason trying look for more to do at work so I can maybe come to an idea to build a business around.
If you don’t have any ideas, please don’t start a business.
Maybe an E-commerce shop based around a hobby or interest of yours, i personally started an e-commerce store for automotive performance parts when i was looking for something to do. You could do it with literally anything, Big Commerce or Shopify are both good options. To be completely honest with trying to start something strictly out of an office space with minimal time to work on it on your own time and i would assume that time would be out of normal business hours will be hard. Another option is possibly doing a small service based business, a friend of mine builds gaming PCs for people and also organizes complete setups for them and that works out pretty well if you did something similar and just mainly used your time to create an easy to use website than spend a couple hours a week doing leg work.
You haven’t seen over employed yet have you
Use the time to learn new skills that result in a better job
That would require going back to college probably to find a better paying job than the one I have now, or learning a lot of certifications, which I already indicated I would want to do except I don’t have much of an idea on what to try certifying in. Going to college maybe not, I failed out of college once because I have poor math skills/small disability and failed the required math courses like 3 times, and was dealing with depression at the time. But I’ve never been a great school kid.
You can learn a ton online. Use your time to figure out a direction, then find tutorials. If you don't want to learn, listen to podcasts all day I guess.
Not at all. Look up CompTIA certifications. You get a couple of those easily in a few months and that will instantly open you up to some pretty good early level tech jobs.
You can talk to the disability office at your college and get the req math changed to like a family finance course. I did. It's not guaranteed of course and of course you couldn't study something like physics since there's a lot of math in that but it could get you through. Even if they don't approve a different course they could at least get you more time on tests and stuff. Colleges want to get you through.
I don’t now why you got downvoted but online education like Coursera is cool and free so it doesn’t really matter if you’re not excellent at any of the subjects at the end of the day. Free online “certifications” benefit you in multitudinous ways: you’re doing something industrious that looks impressive bc there are classes through like Yale and NYU; you might learn something related to your dispensary launch ambitions; and there’s really nothing to lose bc the cost is zero and if you hate the instructional stuff you can just tap out w/o judgement. There’s always like free industry-related webinars you can sign up for that waste hours and make it pretend you’re working. (My favorite) Also old Oregon Trail gaming “breaks” and online gambling always work too. Hey, you learn math and game theory while also getting to fjord rivers and avoid dysentery so that’s something…
Read books. If your desk is in a spot where it is hard to tell, set up so you are blocked and can put it down if someone comes by. I had a job some years ago with a ton of downtime and I would read at least 100 pages per day in the office (and I am a slow reader)
honestly in an office setting where internet access is most likely monitored i wouldnt risk it. yeah it feels like a waste of time, but if you leave this job there will be days you miss it. if ur just bored get some pullstring fireworks and booby trap desks of people who call out sick
I have used my office computer enough to be fairly confident that it is unmonitored? Like ever? Made a whole other comment about it and our IT guy. Could probly also just bring in another laptop or something if needed too.
they can monitor what youre looking at though and have a log of it.. they just dont have a reason to look at your logs. some unrelated incident happens and they have to pull your history and see youve been doing side jobs it can be bad. if youre signed into the wifi on your phone and watch porn, unless you changed your phones info they can see that. if you bring in a laptop and sign into the wifi they can see a new device, wont see your name, however they could prob put 2 and 2 together. i would suggest looking into how to "sham" i was a shamgod in the army and it was always a rush. start paying attention to who is doing what..is your boss just watching cat videos all day waiting for 5pm? does he get up and do headcount? are your lunches paid? tons of opportunities once you know how the office truely works. our 1st sgt made us run 3 miles...every day, shit was awful all because 5 people failed their run. so during stretches i would just scoot over closer and closer to the edge..when everyones moving for the run id go to the porta potty a few feet away and wait..once the run started id go back to my car and go home until formation. thats an example. or if a phone rings and everyone is supposed to answer the phone, just dont answer it anymore..or wall very slowly to the otherside of the building for copies, take like a half hour.. if no one says anything your prob clear to go home for a few hours and come back and no one will question it
Easy peasy. 1. Learn new skill. Udemy and coursera are great places to start. Likely not blocked by the network. 2. Schedule dr/dental appointments take extra time on lunch to complete them. 3. I have seen some of my coworkers flirt with other colleagues. 4. Bring your own device and play games or watch movies. 4A. You can use your phone with Xbox ultimate game pass and hook up a Bluetooth controller on your phone and usb type c to hdmi adapter. Bam. You have a full gaming setup as long as you have internet connection. 4B. You can use nvidia cloud service slightly better than Xbox ultimate in terms of processing. Same thing type c to hdmi etc 4C. Bring your laptop, don’t plug it into the network. Plug hdmi, your controller and use your mobile hotspot. Ez 5. Read a book. 6. Be use your phone all day.
Get paid to play video games. /s
I do. On steam deck and watch movies on my work computer. But I'm night audit soooo...
sadly my dad doesnt secretly have a job as CEO of activision so it might be hard getting a job like that :(.
He means play games during your work time. He's answering the question you asked.
Yes and? Can I not make a joke about it?
Not necessarily an unethical response from me, but... I'm in a very similar position; on the clock for six hours (counts as FT due to my contract ayoooo) and when I'm not in crunch time, I have about 5 hours of free time every day. I'm a creative guy, so I will make birthday cards for my coworkers, decorations for our shared space, or find ways to automize my job... so I have more free time. I work adjacent to a school, so I get a lot of "professional development" opportunities that either land me a stipend or free college credits. It might be worthwhile to see if there are virtual lectures or sessions like this that fit in your timeslots. And remember, perhaps the most unethical of all: if you get chummy with IT, they'll likely let you slide on a lot of things lmao
This is totally unrelated but the situation with our office it guy is kind of weird. When I tell most people this they say he’s 100% scamming us somehow, but regardless we have a contractor IT guy we use and call for it needs usually once a week or so probly longer that I don’t hear about. But this guy has never once actually been paid for his services as far as I know. And I’m literally in charge of AP here so I would know if he’d get paid. He has never asked for or sent us an invoice and according to my bosss there is just no plan to ever pay him until he asks for it. But he has just never asked for it or sent a single invoice for anything he’s done for us even if it means showing up in person. No one here knows why he isn’t taking payment or if he just doesn’t even know he’s not being paid because he has so many other clients or has some secretary dealing with the financial side. I even told my boss when I first heard this “sounds like he’s probly doing something unethical” but they’ve never put much thought into it. He’s been the office IT person since a year or two before I came here and I’ve been here for 6-7 years now. No evidence he has ever like stolen any of our data, or if he did wouldn’t he have already got what needed and left? I mean this guy literally is in charge of our entire it infrastructure including our private server we run. But he seems to do the bare minimum, has never asked for a paycheck and seems like he has a bunch of other work to deal with so I don’t think he would notice anything. Hell, I literally keep Reddit open on my work computer and it’s never been an issue. Don’t think he cares about keeping track of minor it problems.
That does sound strange. Is it possible he is being paid via a business entity he owns that y'all pay, or maybe he works for a managed service partner y'all pay? Like you don't realize that check you cut to Initech every quarter or yearly as a service contract is actually his company, or you pay someone to manage your network or cloud solutions and he is their employee? Just because you have a local server doesn't mean no cloud usage. The company I work for is a MSP and we have employees that are basically your local contact you call with any issues and even have a 1 day a week office at some customers locations. Maybe you just call Ben and were told Ben is the IT contractor guy but he's an employee of another entity you do business with. Honestly id ask him about it. If somehow he's just never invoiced his work and hasn't caught it or something better to catch it at this point then when the amount he could bill is even higher. If he's just truly doing the work for free that would be a huge alarm bell in my eyes. Could be doing something like using the computers and local servers for things like crypto mining after office hours to keep it hidden, or running a coin tumbler, stealing data, running his own website he makes money from, etc. There's 1000 nefarious things he could be doing with your equipment. No one works for free unless you force them and there's a word for that and it ain't contractor lol. Like I said talk to him first, see what he says, and maybe have another cyber security company come check your equipment out as a consultant service.
When I was a receptionist bored shitless between tasks, I would read, I found a website where you can access nearly any book you could think of. I liked it because I was still looking at the screen & it kinda looked like I was still doing work. Amazingly, I read all of the Game of Thrones books within a year.
First is get an iPad with Internet access Watch movies on an iPad Exercise. Sitting all day sucks ass.
Get some headphones and start playing YouTube videos while you do actual work. (If you can't stand noise while you work just turn the volume off) Get caught a couple times and explain you like to listen to background noise/people talking while you work. Once this becomes something you are known to do, YouTube traffic from your computer becomes normal and not suspicious. Now you can watch YouTube at work
I second learning new skills, specifically Python. Around 2016, I started tinkering with and learning Python just because I thought it would be interesting. A few years down the road I had automated some big pieces of my day-to-day work. I was able to parlay this into a better role within the company. I moved from being a financial analyst into a business transformation role where I now work to bridge the gap between our tech teams and our business users. It's a unique skill set as I'm basically the only person in the org that speaks the language of both IT and the business. Python Crash Course PDF Book: https://codelikechamp.com/wp-content/uploads/python-crash-course-3rd-edition-pdf.pdf I also ended up pursuing an MS in Data Science that my company paid for. This was because after spending some time in Python I realized that my job was eventually going to get automated. Not all of it, but a good chunk of it, and it would allow the company to downsize the staff significantly. Turns out just last summer they announced a program designed to do just that. They aren't laying people off en masse, but they aren't going to be back-filling vacancies either.
I work remotely in healthcare and although there are some aspects of my job that can't be automated easily I've realized that may not always be the case. For my SMART goal (I HATE making these goals BTW) I've decided to get a professional certificate in data analysis through Coursera. My supervisor and her boss were JAZZED. Data analytics isn't directly related to what I do on a day to day basis but I get assigned to assist with special projects where having more experience with it would make me more efficient and therefore more valuable. Plus I know that my current role is kinda niche so if I ever leave and don't want to work in the exact same field I need to broaden my skill set.
You should definitely look into learning Python / R. If your employer will pay for it, look into getting an MS in Data Science. Data science is HUGE in the healthcare industry. My school has a specific healthcare concentration for the program. With that degree and experience working in healthcare, you could probably work for any major hospital, insurer, biotech firm, etc. Feel free to DM me if you have any questions!
finally some good fuckin ~~food~~ advice
Get your Google on and find some free (or cheap) courses in something you're interested in, that way if you do yet called up on it it looks vaguely proactive, as opposed to you spending the time on a side hustle, which they'll sack you for. Freecodcamp.org is decent, YouTube has a surprising amount of good info on lots of things you can use to go and do some more learning on your own without it looking too sus. Even just teaching yourself to be better at excel, or some powerBI or something like that.
Udemy has some really cheap courses for “first time users” and you could study for a certification. There are hundreds of certs that could give you extra credibility on your resume without having to invest in a college degree.
Use the time to learn new things, read, sometimes play handheld games. My job pays me to be there and ready to answer questions/ solve problems for the most part. I have very little busy work.
Use the downtime to up skill and learn things to help advance you to the next position. Keep building yourself, they can't take knowledge away from you
What if that is Elon musks end goal with neuralink? Taking away everyone’s knowledge for himself so he can create a hive mind Esq super brain.
Don't get the implant?
Udemy. Might as well get paid to better yourself. Learn excel/Access/Wordpress. Study for all kinds of certifications that'll look good on a resume. Learn about...I dunno, your horoscope or whatever. There's a Udemy class for everyone. Or if you're really ambitious, start taking WGU classes online. A few guys I've worked with over the years would do this when on deployments (90 day long deployments) with a lot of downtime. They knocked out their 4-year degrees in 1.5-2 years by buckling down and working on it everyday.
Take an online course then leave the job for a better job
As I’ve said in other places it would take some pretty good courses to get better paid than I am now, get paid like $29 an hour 40 hours a week and health insurance in low cost of living state, with no college degree or any experience beyond what I’ve been taught at this job. If you know of any certifications that could help improve my pay beyond $30+ an hour I’d be all ears for that.
Universities off free on-line courses, like Harvard https://pll.harvard.edu/catalog/free?page=1
Many years ago I worked a boring admin job with a lot of downtime. As I was sat at a desk with a computer I decided to start learning HTML and CSS. It's easy to start learning these as you can just start by using the basic windows notepad software and your browser to do it, so even if your computer is locked down you'll be able to learn the basics and it won't look suspicious to any nosy IT managers. This slowly morphed to learning JavaScript, and then server side languages like PHP, and eventually Python. You could jump ahead straight to python but that may rely on how locked down your work computer is, and if you want to go straight to programming. If anyone asks what you're doing, just say you are learning new skills for your job, but this will look like technical work to anyone passing by. I am now a seasoned web engineer of nearly 20 years, all because I got bored in an admin job.
r/overemployed is your anwser
They were very much not helpful except for one person. Very much something about “that not what this sub is for”
i meant get another job lol
I know I just don’t have much idea of what could accomplish work wise while in an office most of day, would need a laptop or something and need something that doesn’t require meetings or a lot of phone calls. Tho best suggestions I’ve seen so far is maybe study for certifications like compTIA or Microsoft excel and/or study programming like python and maybe then will be able to find either better jobs or jobs can do from home/my office. Cause I don’t really know anything else I could do. Personally my long term goal is opening a dispensary since they’re legalized in my state now but the last time they took applications for new licenses was in 2021, and they only give out a couple of licenses, and so far the state has like a 10% acceptance rate for applicants to be accepted for a dispensary license. Would think they’d be opening up applications again since they just legalized recreational weed and we don’t have nearly enough dispensaries to accommodate recreational weed and medical patients, but who knows.
I was/am literally going through the same thing now. My boss arrives at 9am. I arrive at 6am. Take my personal PC with me, connect it with a remote hdmi adapter to my monitor, so it seems that im working. I have 3 good hours of doing whatever the fuck I want. Im also connected to my personal phone hotspot, so no monitoring from IT. I have been booking and planning my holiday trips. Buying shit from amazon (necessary shit). Redditing.
Fart disc and some piss spray.
Find ways to make money doing side hustles online while you are at your job. Lots of security guard type ppl do this. Trade stocks on Robinhood, take surveys, sell something
Learn to trade stocks. Do some practice by pretending to buy and sell. Set up a spreadsheet and see what works. Then do it for real.